Season 1, Episode 5 - The Boxtops V - "The Secret Origin of Alfie Coonan, Part 2"

That morning.

As usual, Alfie woke to the rattling of his cell bars. He opened his eyes and saw a Technical Serviceman pass a plate of food through a small slot at the bottom of his door, shutting it just as fast. Despite Alfie’s service to the Academy in busting the smuggling ring, many of Academy’s workers still didn’t trust him. They all seemed on edge as well, which made sense, considering the State Police conducted a serious raid on the district only a month ago.

Let the Academy burn, it’s not my Academy.

Though, when the Class Rep came down to give him his homework the following school day, he did feel a little relieved to learn Isaac and his friends were alright. All things considered, he didn’t really want them to burn.

In the present, he threw off the thin blanket on his bed and stretched. He groaned as he pulled his homework off a small shelf. Homework, for crying out loud. Soon after the smuggling ring bust, he gained a few privileges, such as being able to walk around campus without an immediate escort with him at select times – though he was certainly monitored from afar, no doubt – and a Class Rep came to meet him down in the cells once a day, to take his homework from the previous night and give him that night’s homework.

I'm a weapon.

Not an academic weapon, mind you, but a Rddhi weapon. Math had some applicability to the Rddhi, sure. But ecology? Political science?

I have no need for that. My purpose as a Rddhi user is to be a weapon of the state.

Right?

That’s what they always told him back in the internment camps.

His current cell reminded him a lot of the internment camps in upstate New York for the New Englander minority that lived in areas annexed or liberated by New York following the end of the First American War, depending on your point of view. While some of his fellow New Englanders remained in squalid ghettoes in newly reclaimed cities such as Fort Edward, many New Englanders from upstate villages, destroyed beyond recognition in the ferocious fighting of the war, were shipped off to camps that served as a mixture of housing homeless refugees and keeping a suspect enemy population under close surveillance – internment.

Much like this cell, Alfie lived in cramped conditions, shoddy houses built in the cold weather by the same refugees who now lived in them. His room might have been bigger than the cell, but he shared that room with nearly a dozen other people. Children, old women, alcoholics, sick mothers.

At least I have this cell to myself. And unlike that room, I can keep this place decently clean.

Alfie made it through life in the refugee camp by refusing to accept defeat. In the years after becoming a Rddhi user, things had changed. He didn’t really care about concepts like success or defeat. He just wanted a little bit of freedom, and the momentum of refusing to die from his early years propelled him through his current years.

In the camp, he kept his head down and did whatever they asked of him in order to achieve a long-term victory of ultimate freedom. Now, he kept his head down and did whatever they asked of him because he couldn’t be bothered to keep his head up. But he kept ambling forward. That’s what led him to accepting the Academy offer of joining them in the raid...he groaned, looking at the paper in his hands, knowing that was also why he now had to figure out quadratic equations.

But it also set Alfie apart from his current companion in the Academy’s dungeon. In contrast to the chaotic hustle-and-bustle of the camp, the cell row was quiet and still. It gave Alfie time and space to breath and think, and that’s something he needed most. Just to take stock of his life and where he was in it. At times, though, his thinking would be interrupted by the random musings and observations of his comrade a few cells down, Jackson.

Alfie never really cared for that laid-back Rddhi user. Their time together before imprisonment had been brief. Due to being a New Englander Rddhi user, Alfie didn’t get a choice of career, unlike his New York cohorts – he had to join the military. But being a New Englander also meant that he would be assigned with the exiles down in the Caribbean, one of the few users allocated to them by the New York government (Alfie did hear a rumor of one New York user who specifically wanted to join the CEF, and got there after General Asenov pulled some strings). His assignment was almost an afterthought, given by a government that preferred to keep its attention on the struggling numbers of Wall Street and trade deals with Shanghai than on a makeshift, ragtag occupying force in the Caribbean.

That’s why Alfie only spent a week in Nassau before General Asenov assigned him on a long-term, deep reconnaissance team that would be gone for months at a time. That team only existed on paper, and New York’s auditors – already low in number – had been paid handsomely by Asenov to not look too deeply into his affairs. So, while his “team” was on assignment in a tropical island, Alfie was actually back in New York, keeping a low profile as he linked up with Asenov’s smuggling men.

Panama and Jackson oversaw the movement of hundreds, if not thousands, of New York-produced goods into New England. Between fake New Englander identification papers, shell corporations, generous payments, and their own charisma and occasional deployment of violence, they kept land routes open and coastal smuggling sites hidden. Between the size of New England’s borders and the current technological level, smuggling wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible, either. And there was so much money to be made. Alfie never got confirmation from his superiors, but it seemed like elements of the New England government itself got its occasional cut from the dealings as well.

But Alfie wasn’t paid to think, and smuggling wasn’t why he was in New England. He was only there to join the spy ring in the Rddhi academies. Apparently, the ones in Cambridge and the Institute were well-organized, well-trained, and well-funded. In contrast, the one at West Narragansett Technical Academy was more of an ad hoc ring. Alfie wasn’t quite sure if he believed it, but a few students – or maybe just one, Alfie was never sure – at the Academy had offered their services to Asenov and the Caribbean Expeditionary Force of their own accord. Why they would do that, Alfie had no idea, but he was sent by Asenov to check up on them.

Panama and Jackson got him Elizabeth Pond identification papers, even an address owned by a business entity that, if examined closely, had some suspicious links to smuggler-friendly New England coastal companies. But, for a glorious two weeks, Alfie had his first ever home to himself.

It was a small thing, a one-room studio located in the rows of tenement houses on edges of Elizabeth Pond, but it was his. For those two weeks, Alfie spruced the place up, adding all the little touches that signified that this place was his and his alone. When he opened a window up, the sun shone down at him, he had a colorful set of neighbors, he could walk around without anyone looking over his shoulder, telling him no.

Then the dead drops started coming in.

Jackson told him ahead of time where to find the first dead drop, then waved goodbye to Alfie at the edge of the district of Russet. While Alfie could go through the border security at Elizabeth Pond thanks to his papers, Jackson had no reason to go with him. He could simply use the vast tunnel next work below the entire capital to arrive in Elizabeth Pond. His world was of smuggling; spying would be Alfie’s job.

The first dead drop was simple, giving him instructions on how to answer back and all that. After a few contacts, once a week roughly, they would converse, Alfie and that spy with self-initiative. The dead drops ranged from information on New England customs to a full uniform for the Academy – not that Alfie could go to school there; he would just keep his head down for the time-being. Alfie didn’t mind that. He didn’t need school. Perhaps schooling would help him understand the revolutionary literature sometimes packed away in the deadrops, something that greatly confused Alfie, but all Alfie needed to do was lie low.

All he had to do was help out this spy ring and he would be granted his freedom. That’s what Asenov told him, after all.

In the early September heat, a dead drop chilled him to the bone. This one contained detailed instructions on actions he needed to take.

Esther Adzinoki, a student closely involved with the school’s Rddhi research program, had a habit of dropping off records late in the evening on Tuesdays at the school’s Tertiary building. By that time, the only students and faculty in that building would be janitors and a few cafeteria workers getting rid of leftover food such as blueberry bread. Alfie would not run into them, but even if he did, they would pose no problems.

The objective: capture this great source of information, bring her all the way down to the loading docks at the back of the Tertiary building, then drop her off in a waiting van. Mission complete, just like that.

Alfie scratched his head at that. The plan seemed rushed and full of holes, based on assumptions and hopes rather than full-proof, watertight evidence. And Alfie was there to check in on the sp(ies) already there, so shouldn’t he be giving them orders?

But for all of his life, Alfie followed orders, not give them. By this point, he only had to energy to carry out plans, not create them. And whoever this spy was, they seemed bursting with energy, so Alfie sighed, memorized the paper, burned it, then carefully unpacked his school uniform.

Alfie wore a uniform at South Utica Academy as well, but that uniform included an armband signifying his inferior status. This uniform...seeing himself in the gray-green blazer and black khakis, well, he couldn’t describe how it felt, to briefly imagine a normal life.

Alfie followed the plan to the letter, which called for hiding in plain sight. He arrived at the Academy during the morning rush, blending in with hundreds of other students in identical uniforms. Fortunately, the big student standing at the gate, watching everyone arrive on school grounds, was distracted by an argument he had with some girl with a sword in its scabbard on her back. It took Alfie a few days later to realize that that was when he first saw Isaac, who stood there along with her.

At the time, he paid Isaac no mind, of course. He seemed like any of the other students. But the experience of walking through that courtyard was unlike anything Alfie had ever experienced before. Without that armband, he was just another student. Nobody stared at him, nobody backed away, nobody pitied him. He wasn't New Englander or New Yorker or anyone with a label. He was just a person.

The only potential issue occurred when he passed by two students sitting on a courtyard bench under an oak tree. One girl proudly had a camera in her hands, talking about big dreams. The other girl next to her seemed quiet, too quiet, with mousy brown hair. But something about her made Alfie nervous. She noticed him. To her, he was not just another person.

They made eye contact for a brief moment, and Alfie thought he saw a snake silently slithering in her hair. But then she looked away, back at her talkative friend. Alfie sighed in relief, then continued on with his mission.

He went to the Tertiary building, keeping his head down. There weren’t as many students here as in the courtyard or other buildings, but there were enough so that he wouldn’t stand out. He walked as though he had a purpose, which he technically did, after all – and when you walk with a purpose, real or not, people aren’t likely to question you. And nobody questioned Alfie as he made it to his destination – a bathroom.

Yes, Alfie would be hiding in that bathroom for the next twelve hours. And it actually worked. Nobody came in during the entire school day – Alfie had little better to do than closely keep track of the time on his pocket watch, watch the little hands move far too slowly. He closed his eyes and meditated on that toilet, deep in thought, visions of a normal school life and his own little house passing through his mind. Thoughts of a future like this was what nourished him back in the camp, so passing twelve hours like that wasn’t especially difficult for Alfie.

And then the time finally came. Honed by essentially a full day of meditation, Alfie sensed the target walk by the bathroom, heading toward her destination. Alfie let her arrive inside the classroom, suspecting nothing out of the ordinary, before making his move.

He would have to admit, he did feel a little bad, closing the door to the classroom behind him, pointing his flamethrower finger gun at a girl who dropped all the folders in her hands from shock. From his point of view, she was just a girl - tall, pretty, nervous - with a look in her eyes that suggested that if he hadn’t been trying to kidnap her, she would’ve been nice to him. And after all, this girl would most likely ended up tortured for information or smuggled all the way back to New York and then tortured for information.

And if Alfie did that, wasn’t he basically putting an armband of his own on her-

No. A friendship with all beings was not what the look in her eyes said after all. They were fearful, and maybe she was actually a kind person to those she considered the same as her, but when it became clear to her that he was a Rddhi user, she looked at him with eyes that marked him as an inferior. Maybe not because he was a New Yorker, maybe just because he was a Rddhi user, but either way, she saw him as different.

Alfie lost his cool and backhanded her. The orders did say she just needed to be in working condition, not necessarily full-health, after all. She stumbled back into a filing cabinet, sliding to the ground as cassette tapes and manila envelopes showered around her. When Alfie approached her, wondering why he he had to be born so different, she started throwing tapes at him. It was almost a comical scene, but a few more punches put an end to that.

“Just keep quiet,” Alfie ordered as he tied her legs and hands with rope he had brought with him. The girl seemed to accept her fate, though that didn’t gain any sympathy from Alfie.

He hit her again. “Maybe you can learn some humility along the way.”

He knelt down and went to tape her mouth shut, but then-

Alfie sensed a presence behind the door to the classroom. He mentally smacked himself; he got so caught up in capturing her that he failed to lock the door. He didn’t expect to be in there for that long anyway, and it’s not like a Rddhi user couldn’t bust down a locked door.

But still. Alfie rose, staring at the doorway. Rddhi tensed in his fingers. Whoever stood on the other side of that door may very well hold his destiny in their hands.

After a moment, the door slammed open.